Pearl Primus

Pearl Primus, (born Nov. 29, 1919, Trinidad—died Oct. 29, 1994, New Rochelle, N.Y., U.S.), American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and teacher whose performance work drew on the African American experience and on her research in Africa and the Caribbean.

Primus’s family moved to New York City when she was two years of age. She studied biology at Hunter College in New York City and later joined the New Dance Group, with whom she made her dance debut in 1943. The following year she gave a solo recital, which led to several Broadway engagements. Primus formed her own company in 1944.

Primus’s first major choreographic work, African Ceremonial (1944), attested to her early interest in her black heritage. She traveled to Africa in 1948, the first of many such research trips (which eventually led to her Ph.D. in African and Caribbean studies). Her dances reflected these travels, notably The Wedding (1961) for Alvin Ailey’s company. Though most of her other dances are based on primitive West Indian forms, she choreographed several pieces about American life, including StrangeFruit (1945), a reference to the practice of lynching; The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1944), based on a poem by Langston Hughes; and Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore (1979), about the racially motivated bombing of churches in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s.

In addition to choreography, Primus directed a performing arts centre in Liberia and taught at Hunter College.

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